Am I Being Manipulated? Am I Being Manipulative?

Evocation

Evocation is the call-and-response system at the heart of compassion and empathy. It doesn’t seek to control anyone, but it does elicit a response. This framework was presented in David Buss’ (1987) “Selection, evocation, and manipulation,” and while it needs further research, it does provide a helpful distinction for us to build on.

When a newborn cries for attention, we all respond to their distress, but they’re hardly a manipulative mastermind. Their feelings evoke a feeling in us. Indeed, parents learn the fine line between evocation and manipulation when their children become toddlers and start acting sweet or throwing tantrums to get what they want.

Mirror neurons allow us to imitate and learn from others even when we’re not aware of it. One person yawns, two people yawn, three people yawn. Likewise, displays of emotion evoke an emotional response. We’re saddened by the sadness of others, and escalated by other people’s anger, and we all know how infectious laughter can be. 

This is potentially how we develop empathy, yet empathy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Context matters. Power dynamics matter, and our empathy within these power dynamics can evoke different feelings, too. Consider how the tears of a crying boy evoke a different response than those of a crying man, or how your friend being upset with you is very different from your boss being upset with you. 

Since these power dynamics change what feelings are evoked in us and their intensity, we can often feel manipulated by the social norms and expectations attached to these power dynamics, even though no actual manipulation has occurred.  

In trauma-informed therapy, counselors often discuss how the autonomic nervous system can get overstimulated, resulting in the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. And we respond to this distress when we encounter it in other people, sometimes contributing to an unhealthy social dynamic. This can look like people pleasing in avoidant households, codependency in family systems struggling with addiction, or the drama triangle in families in conflict. 

It’s not intentional. No one’s to blame. Yet a pattern has been established. Empathy can be exhausted, compassion can be fatigued, and relationships can be strained. For this reason, we can also feel manipulated when we find ourselves stuck in an unhealthy system even though, once again, no actual manipulation has occurred.

Family therapy or couples counseling can help humanize all parties involved. Those who feel taken advantage of need validation for their effort and sacrifice, while those struggling with distress also need validation for their effort and struggle. By identifying how no one is actively trying to manipulate each other, it’s possible to identify the unhealthy pattern at work and how the distress of one ripples out into the distress of many. 

A client may hate getting angry, but if their fight response evokes the fawn response in others, they may have inadvertently outsourced their emotional labor. The depressed may lament so often that those around them can’t tell if their call for aid is warranted, like the boy who cried wolf. And the anxious are painfully aware of how their anxiety puts others on edge, perpetuating their anxiety with guilt, like a snake biting its own tail.

When clients realize how their mental health impacts others, there can be an increase in their symptoms, spiked by guilt and shame. They may self-isolate, or terminate relationships, or censor themselves to “spare others,” yet this only exacerbates things more. Combining self-compassion with social compassion, it’s possible to use the existence of evocation as a motivator, as helping themselves will also help those around them.

Shifting from causal blame to empathy requires a lot of perspective-taking, and people will still feel frustrated or guilty because distress doesn’t disappear once it’s named. It takes time to develop and reinforce healthy coping mechanisms, yet it can help a great deal to notice when someone’s distress evokes a response in us, so that we also learn healthy boundaries and coping mechanisms, too.  

Maladaptive Manipulation 

Maladaptive manipulation is a deliberate, self-serving skill set, albeit a maladaptive coping mechanism operating at the expense of others. Despite the justification for the behavior, maladaptive manipulation favors control over compassion, ultimately dehumanizing people. There are many control tactics, most of which rely on aggression, avoidance, pity, or charisma.

Aggressive tactics exert a level of doggedness, intimidation, or hostility. These include coercion, threats and posturing, physical or verbal abuse, blackmail, smear campaigns, aggressive humor, weaponizing triggers, and gaslighting. Consider how a persistent person may try and try and try to convince you, eroding your defenses to get what they want. Consider how snarky comments and sarcastic humor can nip at your heels like a sheepdog or deliberately set off your triggers. Consider how gaslighting undermines your experienced reality by convincing you that you’re delusional.

Avoidance tactics implement isolation, withholding, deceit, the silent treatment, and active denial. Unlike our avoidant flight response, these tactics aren’t trying to escape the situation. Quite the opposite, they’re feigning a flight response to lure you in. There is a difference between isolating to take space and isolating to make you miss them when they’re gone. There is a difference between maintaining privacy and keeping you in the dark to maintain the advantage. There is a difference between needing quiet reflection and someone using the silent treatment to frustrate you. And there is a difference between unconsciously repressing the truth and actively suppressing what they don’t want to be true.

Pity tactics gain attention or sidestep consequences by playing the victim, catastrophizing, feigning helplessness, or playing the guilt card. Commandeering the victim role, the manipulator supersedes context, proclaiming that their wound is equal to or greater than everyone else’s, regardless of the facts. 

Likewise, when a person feigns helplessness, they’re just playing the damsel in distress, the inept space cadet, or the sensitive flower to get out of a situation, even though they are quite capable. 

Problematically, many people appropriate mental health language to convince others that they’re too rigid or fragile to help themselves. Compare the very real triggers a client with PTSD contends with to a client threatening to “shut down” or “freak out” if they don’t get their way. Since pity ties to guilt, some manipulators may strive to make you feel bad by lamenting how you don’t care enough, or spend enough time with them, or by making you feel like a burden indebted to their kindness.

Charismatic tactics favor love-bombing, insincere flattery, seduction, and performative friendship. Unlike the adaptive form of charisma, which seeks to empower, inspire, and uplift, the maladaptive form of charisma focuses on reputation, self-gratification, and personal gain. Compare someone seducing you because they’re in love to someone seducing you to increase their body count. Compare the friends who love your company to the enigmatic cult leader claiming they’re the only one who understands you.

Clients on the receiving end of manipulation need a lot of psychoeducation to expand their awareness and fortify their boundaries. By learning how to identify these tactics and how they work, it becomes easier to shield oneself as necessary. 

On the other side, clients who knowingly engage these tactics can struggle with conventional therapy. They often seek to “win therapy” by deceiving their counselor or mining the session for attention, compassion, or unwarranted validation.

To work with active manipulators, one must be able to identify their tactics as they arise, and with the same compassionate understanding, one would use to address any maladaptive coping mechanism. Using a cost-benefit analysis can help, for while they may claim their manipulations are effortless or victimless, they actually take a lot of time and energy. As manipulators often rationalize their behavior, well-thought-out discourse doesn’t get that far. It’s only through experience that people start to believe their needs can be met organically, without manipulation. For many, the therapeutic relationship is their first example of a healthy relationship, especially when counselors role model genuine compassion and unconditional positive regard.